


codewriter |デスノート

by ivoryflowers



Series: Notes Macabre [1]
Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: ADHD Character, Autistic Character, Autistic Near, Death Note AU, Hacking, Multi, Murder, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Roleplay Inspired, criminal activity, fragile x chromosome, more to be added - Freeform, murder case, stygian-archangel and l-v-britannia 's ocs on tumblr, white collar criminal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 11:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20852531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryflowers/pseuds/ivoryflowers
Summary: There are many realms and many different Notes. The Death Note was only the beginning, as Kataoka Aki finds.This fic explores the Death Note Universe in greater detail, expanding on the possibility that other, similar notes may exist, unknown to the human world.Crossposted on Wattpad.





	1. epigraph 碑文

_\- choose your words wisely. - _

_[10/7/19 ongoing.]_

_ [dedicated to my friend @CalamityBoy who had the patience to indulge me with the roleplay which inspired this.]_

_ [also dedicated to @LxNaomi , whose roleplays helped me flesh out my characters a bit more.]_


	2. prologue

[ 運命決定者の領域 ]  
REALM OF FATE DECIDERS

The sky was full of stars held together tenuously by strings.

Threads spun into strings which spun into ropes which tied into knots around celestial bodies, passing through looms that spun autonomously. The beings of the realm, the _kittei-sha, _lurked on the ground below, scrutinizing threads before tossing them into the air to settle them in their star-crossed paths. Occasionally one of the fate gods would pull one of the strings around a pen and scrawl something in one of their notebooks. The attached thread would glow softly and gently move in response, obediently bumping and entwining with other strings as directed.

One of the fate gods, a thin, hunched being who looked like he was made of several thick layers of paper, took an autumn-colored string from a large cluster of threads, examining its lustrous surface and reading the name attached to it:

片岡亜希 | _Kataoka Aki_

He peered down at the large, gaping pool of liquid glass a few steps away - a vast gap in the floor of the Fate Realm through which he could see the mortals he wanted to write about. The orange string trailed through the air and into the glassy liquid, attaching inexplicably to a young woman staring out of a window. Pensively, he played with the thread, twirling it around his index finger and thumb. He stared at the threads closest to the girl's, then gathered them all into a twist around his pen, touching it to the paper of his notebook.

_Kataoka Aki will be robbed by -_

"What are you writing, Mei?"_  
_

Mei looked up, not lifting his pen. A female, humanoid god of fate, with flowers sprouting between her shoulders and on her head, sat next to him, looking at the strings he had selected. He glanced at the threads which had begun to creep towards each other, slightly, as he scrawled.

"A Marker."

Mori stared at the strings wound around his pen and his fingers. The mortal girl attached to the orange thread was probably younger than twenty, surrounded by thick textbooks and neatly stacked papers. The kanji on her string showed she was Japanese, and what Mori could see of her work was of college level. 

"Really? What kind of Marker is it?" she asked, as she read the names attached. 

"A violent one. Watch."

Mori shuddered, but since it was a Marker, it wasn't uncommon for something bad to happen. After all, major life-changing events weren't always about rescuing puppies or eating ice cream with a friend. So she stared through the gap at the young woman, who was now scribbling homework answers in a notebook on her desk.

"She has a rather confusing line ahead," Mei commented absently, glancing away to look at a similarly bright thread that hung, in a stubbornly vertical manner, slightly further than his arm's reach. He looked back at Mori, who was watching the happenings of the pit at a close distance to the edge. Her flower petals lifted to an almost null degree as minute currents of air from the mortal world, far below, straggled into the realm, immediately pushed away by every breath of a god of fate. 

The brightly hanging, distant thread twitched as the orange thread was intertwined with strings of black and brown.

And then Mei saw something; a window shattered behind the mortal girl and a rag coated in drugs was stuffed over her face - she squirmed, tried to hold her breath, but suddenly her breath lost her to the drugs in the cloth -

Mori's journal fell in her shock, through the gap, through the liquid glass.

The orange thread snapped, falling away from the two gods of fate, and the bright, distant thread trembled.

Far below, the girl slumped, unconscious, as the rag was removed from her mouth.


	3. ransacking

A faux fur rug was covered with books on venomous animals, forensics, physics textbooks and biology encyclopedias.

In the center of the book fortress sat Kataoka Aki, balancing a book about cardiology on her knees. Sheaves of lecture notes, integral equations, and post-its formed the turrets of her little castle, the flag of which was made from a large blanket dangling off the sofa. She leaned against the base of the couch, instead of sitting on it, like a normal person would, as she chewed over the information from the paragraphs in front of her, processing the logic like a computer receiving a command.

_The tissue of the heart consists of involuntarily contracting cardiac muscle. The internal structure of this organ consists of the _ _ septum _ _, the two _ _ atriums _ _ and two _ _ ventricles _ _. The major blood vessels leading to the heart are -_

She flipped a page without finishing the sentence, then decided to close the book in favor of a folder full of forensics case studies. Terms were circled everywhere, stained with highlighter ink and marked with kanji in columns. Aki leafed through her notes, reading the latest case study and scrawling answers in her files. The laboratory practicals she had performed in the past week had shown her new toxins to deconstruct, and from that she had learned more animals to be wary of, more forces to calculate, new equations...not that the last two were strictly required for her postgraduate course. She was just a science nerd. But everything she could use to supplement the vast inventory of information in her mind was for the greater good. If she wanted to make an impact on her chosen field, if she wanted to be of use if another Kira came up, if she could somehow help _L _if that happened -

She needed to eat.

Aki closed her books and folders suddenly, at the twinge of her nerves that reminded her that she was hungry and needed nourishment. Her brain issued its command, with some input from her tastes requesting that she make spicy noodles. Thankfully she had a packet in her cupboard somewhere, but she still needed to go out to get groceries regardless.

_Gotta keep healthy if I want to be helpful, _she chastised, although as she pulled her last pack of instant noodles from her cupboard and read the nutrition label (as per her habit) she grimaced at the amount of sodium in one serving. So much for 'health consciousness'.

_At least they taste nice, even if they won't make me taller_.

It was true. Aki was at her tallest, at seventeen; no matter how much milk she'd made an effort to drink, her bones did not grow, and her growth hormones refused to reactivate. It was very mildly disappointing, but 5'4'' was pretty good by the usual Asian standards.

Ah, well. At least she could reach the top shelf of her pantry.

She filled a kettle with tap water and began to boil it as she opened the packet of noodles. They rattled into a pot with a quiet clinking -

And then the window behind her shattered with the sound of nails being ground in a concrete pestle.

Thin fragments of deadly, ice-like glass exploded inwards as someone kicked it in, raising the decibel level of the normally tranquil house to a sharp 70. Aki was startled, reflexively covering her ears and wincing -

"Stay quiet or I'll cut you."

Aki's eyes widened in fear as someone climbed through the shattered window, grasping her face hard with a roughly gloved hand. The assailant was male, she could tell, as she was crushed against his neck. His other hand raised quickly - a rag smelling of chloroform was quickly slapped against her nose and mouth as she tried to squirm away. Muffled sounds of terror clawed against the cloth uselessly as the man's left hand moved down to her neck, grasping it tightly so she was forced, against her common sense, to gasp for tainted air. As she tied to resist, the back of her head pushed ineffectively against the man's face, which she felt was covered. A voice synthesizer crackled as he grunted, pushing back against her head with slightly more force than she was capable of dealing. The smell of the drug made her eyes feel like they were being poked out of her eye sockets; her throat hurt from the inside out as the man continued to squeeze her neck. It hurt so much.

_I don't want to die._

Her eyes stung, spilling tears. _I can't die before I..._

_...help..._

She fell unconscious in her assailant's arms, head slumped over his left wrist and dangling limply like a cut marionette. The man allowed her to settle, just to make sure she was truly out, and removed the drugged rag from her mouth.

"For a kid who does post-grad forensics before twenty," he observed, as he kicked her body out of the way, "She was pretty easy to take down." Not that it was a bad thing.

"Pfft, we were careful, and we still are. That had something to do with it."

A second man had dropped into the kitchen and was now crouched on the ground, an unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He chewed the blunt like a piece of licorice as he studied Aki. "So, her daddy's dead, huh?"

He felt the taste of tobacco stain his tongue; his position on his haunches made him feel a slight thrill of impatience. The kleptomaniac inside him was pointing out several things he could steal within the kitchen alone. Hell, it was tempting to send everything crashing into the bottom of his bag in an instant. All it would take was a jolt, and he'd be high on the feeling of taking. He licked his lips, somehow managing not to swallow his blunt. He tasted excitement in the paper.

The first man knew too well that his associate was a klepto; the subtle sound of his shoes shifting weight onto his toes against linoleum was a sign that he was straining against the unseen irons of their plan, wanting to take everything he possibly could.

"Yep. Heart attack, Los Angeles, apparently," the first man said, as he walked through the living room, checking various items. Textbooks neatly arranged on the floor and coffee table amidst papers and folders weren't worth taking. He didn't touch them. "Don't take too much of this crap. I don't care how itchy your fingers are."

The other man was raking through drawers, gleeful, every steal giving him a hit of dopamine as he shoved items into his bag. The girl's wallet, he emptied of its yen; he took the photo of her and her family out of its tiny sleeve and tossed it out to land on her ID card, taking the square itself as his fingers crawled onto another wallet. It had no yen, but he took the pouch anyway, discarding the IDs inside it. He couldn't sell those.

"Yeah, yeah. Not like Kira'll get me for this," he smirked as he chewed on his blunt some more, moving on to the next rooms to look for other things to soothe his itching hands. His companion sighed as a third man exited a bedroom, businesslike and efficient, to swap bags with the second thief.

"For God's sake, stop acting like a weasel on crack," the man scolded, as he hefted the full bag to stash it nearby. "If you don't hurry up, we'll get caught here." His voice distorted through his device with small noises in between that sounded like mumbled complaints, which the second thief ignored in favor of chewing his cigarette.

The first thief looked inside the girl's bedroom, noting the laptop on her desk. Maybe the files were on it...there was a good chance that the girl inherited her father's laptop, though she'd be smart enough to clean it out and transfer everything to a hard drive. Whatever. The laptop was valuable regardless, so he took it, carefully placing it in his large cross-back satchel. 

As the third thief walked out, hidden from view by a specific path to a specific car, the klepto came up with an impressive amount of paraphernalia, having taken every single book the girl had laid out so he could set to work selling them; he'd taken her phone, several cords, a pair of earrings - everything that was worth a yen bill or coin - and also several USBs, floppy disks and drives. The probability of them _not_ getting what they needed from all of the girl's tech garbage, he mused, was so small he wasn't bothered to think about it. 

_This was fun._

Satisfied with the quelled itch in his covered, spider-like fingers, he smiled. The girl was still knocked out on the floor. Maybe she'd appreciate a cigarette when she woke up. After all, she'd just been robbed.

The man played with his tobacco for a second. 

_ Meh. She'd light the thing, not chew it. I_ _t'd be a waste of a good roll._

With a distorted chuckle, he left the house, following his companion on the hidden path.

The first thief looked at her as she lay curled on the floor, a pot of limp noodles having cooled on the stove.

_Looks like we ruined lunch. Sorry, kid._

* * *

Raindrops settled quickly on shards of shattered glass, refracting water against sharp edges and showing linoleum unfocused through micro-domes of crystal. A cold hand of stormy wind blew the splinters of glass remaining in the window-frame onto the floor, where they broke into colorless dust. 

It was a crime scene.

The girl lay on a bed wrapped in a blanket, a respiratory mask resting over her mouth and nose. Police were standing indoors as the gurney was pushed outside for loading.

"Please contact us when she feels well enough to cooperate," a young officer said softly, glancing at Aki. _Poor kid. _He could see blue veins pronounced within her skin.

"Yes, Matsuda-san," the paramedic loading the foot-end of the wheeled bed said, bowing slightly as the officer offered a hand. "We'll monitor her and get back to you."

The girl's hair lifted slightly off her face as the breeze blew, and she tensed in her sleep, feeling cold. As the medics lifted the bed into the ambulance, they saw Matsuda's expression through the rectangular windows on the doors.

Sadness.

Déjà vu, maybe.

Rain fell on the glass, on the ground, into the young man's hair as he watched the ambulance leave; one of the paramedics secured the girl's blanket.

He wished Chief Yagami would say something to ground him.

Matsuda wondered if the girl would be okay. She looked, or felt, like someone Sayu would be friends with. 

Chief Yagami would know.

Then again, it didn't matter.

The ambulance drove steadily down the road, its lights flashing, Matsuda thought, in a melancholy way - that was probably because the rain was distorting the colors - but he'd wasted enough time being sentimental.

He should go do something useful.


	4. aftermath

_Beep._

The world smelled like something unfocused.

There was a smell of plastic, of cold air, rubbing alcohol...the stinging fluorescence of strip lighting, a coldness of sheets. What she saw in her head was reminiscent of a kaleidoscope filled with beige.

She felt weak.

_Beep._

She needed water.

_Beep._

The hospital gown was too cold.

_Beep._

She wanted to be in bed at home.

_Beep._

_Why...?_

_Beep. Beep._

_What did they want with me...?_

_Crash_

_"Stay quiet or I'll cut you."_

_Beep beep beep beep beep_

Her eyes opened in fear at the memory - it was them, it was because of them that she was -

_Crash_

The door opened loudly; Aki would have screamed if not for the mask on her face. She gripped the sheets anxiously, feeling her throat crushed by a phantom hand -

"Kataoka-san, you are safe here," someone said quietly, soft but dutiful steps approaching the bedside. A woman's hand flitted to Aki's left wrist, resting on her pulse to steady it naturally. "Remember?"

_Beep beep beep beep beep_

Aki's hands were still clenched against her bed sheets, breath condensing rapidly on the underside of the respiratory mask. It was only Dr. Sasaki, she saw that, but her heart still beat too fast.

_Beep beep beep beep beep_

"Please breathe, honey. You're safe with me."

_Beep beep beep_

It was simple, right? Respiration was inhale-exhale. A contraction of musculature in the abdomen to pull in air and acquire oxygen. To expel carbon dioxide and nitrogen and other molecules.

_Beep beep_

It was simple.

_Beep beep_

It was...just that. Biology. She liked biology.

_Beep beep_

"You're safe, honey."

_ Beep_

Fog condensed more slowly on the underside of the respiratory mask as Aki began coaching her lungs again, breathing the smell of plastic and hand sanitizer. She registered the clinking noises of acrylic origami cranes dangling from Dr Sasaki's hairpiece and the shine of the sun through the window blinds. The smell of rubbing alcohol stopped thrashing violently through her airways. As her pulse slowed, the doctor went through her routine checks.

"You're very lucky, Aki-chan," Sasaki remarked, as she checked her notes. Considering chloroform poisoning and battery - the girl's neck and limbs were bruised, and she had been very sick for days when she first awoke - she seemed to have escaped the more serious consequences. No broken bones, no renal failure, minimal permanent liver damage...

"Sasaki-obasan...did they take my laptop?"

Her voice was barely loud enough to overcome the sounds of beeping monitors and her ventilation mask, strained as if her vocal cords had been tuned badly. She could have said she was thirsty or that she was cold...but the laptop. That was...important...

Dr Sasaki blinked at her. She had expected some kind of plaintive complaint, something she could address, but she knew the laptop was like lifeblood to her patient.

"I don't know, dear. Once you're discharged, you'll be taken to your house. You can check then."

Aki flinched and said nothing.

"Are you thirsty?"

Nod.

The bed was raised with a whirring of compliant gears and a wrinkling of fabric. A paper cup of water brushed her fingers as Dr Sasaki removed the oxygen mask, having checked several criteria off her mental checklist. Aki drank, a residual taste of oxygen running through her mouth.

"You seem to be doing well enough to be discharged within the next three days," Sasaki said, looking at Aki as she put the cup down on a small table. Her dark hair was messy from being pressed against a pillow for so long, and she was paler than usual, but the wary shyness in her eyes remained, afraid of asking too much.

"Thank you."

Dr Sasaki patted the top of her head, running fingers through thick, lightly waved hair and watching the girl's soft dark eyes widen a little, so much like Kataoka Ayeka's. Her features were quintessentially Asian. Her face shape was her father's - smooth-skinned, with a slightly pointed chin and thin eyebrows with long lashes - and her facial features - the softness of her dark eyes and the way her mouth moved when she smiled was her mother's. None of it had changed through her growth.

Her slim fingers gripped the fabric of her hospital gown, twisting the thin cloth, as Sasaki stood, wishing she could look after her honorary child, but knowing full well the spider-silk will of the girl would refuse.

She slid her hairpiece from the bun in her hair and settled it in Aki's hands. "I'll get you some paper. I know you love origami."

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

She left. Aki turned the hairpiece in her hands, looking at the silver tortoiseshell patterns on the teeth and the acrylic paper cranes attached to it by thin black strings. She'd always liked it, and Sasaki-obasan knew that. She'd been there since Aki had first spoken, first walked, first started putting things together to make other things.

She'd been there through checkups and award ceremonies and the days Aki had spent waiting outside her mother's hospital room when her mother was no longer the surgeon, but the patient, weakening, weakening, weakening, unraveling like a frayed thread with every pass of sun.

She'd been there when her father broke down on that first day, the first day without Ayeka, held Aki close to her chest when she stood, stoically, uncomprehending, the pieces of a machine falling to pieces in her shaking hands.

Aki hugged her knees, soft tears soaking through the fabric of her gown, because now Junpei was gone, and now Sasaki was the only one left and people still wanted to hurt her because of her father, and because now she was in a hospital that smelled so heavily like the perfume of death and the smell of chloroform was in her head -

And it was all because of Kira.

Kira had killed everyone. Every last one of the people she had tried to help.

The fear, the rage, at that name seemed to boil in her chest and rise in her throat as if it were bile, alive, straining to destroy her from the inside out. Somewhere in the world, Kira was laughing over the people he had killed.

She was still alive though. Kira hadn't killed AZRIEL. The one behind the screens who had all the information that Kira had killed for. 

She, the angel of Death, could hold it over Kira himself. In memory of her father.

The thought made her feel better. No matter what had happened to her father's laptop, she had spares. She had drives. Everything. If Kira continued, she'd be able to keep working on her father's research. L himself would listen to her if she could do something. Dubious history or not.

The world knew Kira. Now Kira needed to know the name of AZRIEL.

She dried her eyes.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

_ I'll show the world what the true Angel of Death can do._

_I am hope._


	5. concealment

The office was an unending monochrome of gray, the embodiment of plain justice. Tired eyes were clouded by the steam of cups of coffee. Aki sat across from the young man at the table, rubbing the sleeves of her hoodie with her fingertips, eyes cast down to the edge of his desk.

"Kataoka-san, what can you tell me about the people who broke into your house?" the young man asked, fingers resting on his keyboard to file a report.

"There were two," she said quietly. "Both male, similar height. They had masks and gloves and voice synthesizers. Prepared for Kira."

She braced her knees against her chest in the chair she was sitting in, observing the officer quietly. He was called Matsuda. Seemed nice, casual. Didn't mind her heels on the seat. From the movement of his eyes, their slight widening, her posture reminded him of something.

He stiffened at the mention of Kira, his fingertips shifting on the keys, but looked at Aki politely, "They can't be too careful."

He knew something. She'd heard of him before - or rather, as AZRIEL, she knew him.

松田桃太|_ Matsuda Tōta _

She'd seen his files, back at the height of the investigation into Kira. One of the people trusted by L himself, from the NPA headed by Yagami Sōichirō...

"No, they can't." She hugged her shins, feeling the walls caving in around her. "He's out there. A ghost." She pressed her chin into the space between her kneecaps, feeling her heartbeat against her knees. The grayness of the world dissolved into the static of radio stations, stills of people mid-choke, screams of pain as their hearts rebelled...the flopping of corpse hands against the floors of mortuaries, dead, dying eyes...

Her heartbeat tore at her lungs. "I can tell they watched me." Aki was shaking in the chair. Matsuda looked at her, eyes concerned. "Are you alright?" He leaned forward, as if he wanted to put a hand on her shoulder.

Damn it. Making herself smaller was _not _going to make the problems go away. She forced her eyes up to look at him, the words breaking from her mouth.

"They broke into the window behind me," she said, "while I was making lunch. So they had to have seen me there. The man who grabbed me first had chloroform on him, knew how to choke someone out. The dosage was right for someone my size, judging from the amount of time he took to knock me out, but I suffered little permanent effect, meaning he didn't intend to cause too much harm. If he'd wanted to do that it would have taken less time for me to faint, and there would be more substantial traces of chloroform around my house. From that I gather they knew my physical appearance well enough to dose me."

She paused at the look on Matsuda's face, then bashfully added, "They stole a lot of things too, so there had to be someone waiting to haul what they took, since a lot of the things I lost were gadgets."

She'd come home with Dr Sasaki for a day, just to see what was left of her house. Now she carried a backpack that contained most of it - clothes, a few personal articles, her father's laptop. Her fakes had worked, and she knew what they were after from what they stole, but it was impossible to tell this to Matsuda, unless she wanted to be arrested.

If he found out she was AZRIEL, she'd be done.

Matsuda's stare was the dumbfounded look of a fish observing a human through its tank. As she sat with her heels pressed into the seat of the chair, spilling deductions, she reminded him, stupidly, of Ryuzaki, Near, even, although she sounded so _uncertain _and _afraid_. In Aki he saw intelligence, but none of the confidence of either of the detectives.

"My colleagues agree," he said with a sad smile. She seemed so _young, _younger than Yagami Sayu. Even after Light's death, Kira's objectives had shaken the world, razed its principles, so everyone was afraid. A stab of regretful anger ran through his nerves -

_"What was it all for?"_

_The tears fell, blurring the gun in his shaking hands, but he could see him, falling, dripping blood, shot after shot -_

No. He typed frantic keystrokes against the keyboard, almost mindlessly entering details into the program. Because _how could he? How could Light -_

_No. No no no - not when the girl was shaken up as it was. Not when there was someone to see. Because God forbid anyone else find out, not after Misa -_

His hands were shaking. He was sweating, feeling like he was being punched by the unyielding fists of a storm, and trembling fingers tried to grasp his coffee, just so he could do _something_, anything, to distract him, even if it was clearly bad.

"Matsuda-san." Aki's legs dangled down from the chair to touch the carpet as she looked him in the eye. He was reaching for his coffee but at the same time pulling away, "Pardon me for saying, but I don't think you need that right now." Her quiet voice stirred the air of the office gently, the way Near's voice had echoed through the Yellow Box, shaking his soul from the inside.

"Right, of course." Why did he choose to deal with her? Why couldn't it be someone from the NPA who had dropped the Kira case? It was supposed to be a textbook robbery.

"I...I can...talk to someone else if I'm upsetting you..." she was whispering at this point, the walls caving in again, and she wanted to go home. She wanted to go back to Sasaki-obasan, forget everything. Forget justice, just for one hour. Forget Kira.

"No, please don't worry about that," Matsuda smiled, though he felt invisible fingers prodding deep into his spine, wanting him to scream. "Kataoka-san, we'll look into this matter to the best of our capacity. We'll find them." He looked at the screen in front of him, displaying the girl's details:

片岡 亜希 | Kataoka Aki

Sex: F

DOB: 94/11/10 [November 10, 1994]

Occupation: Student, 妙大学 (Myō University)

Next of kin:

Formerly mother 片岡 アイエカ | Kataoka Ayeka, deceased.

Formerly father 片岡 順平 | Kataoka Junpei, deceased.

If needed please contact 佐々木千春 | Sasaki Chiharu.

"Thank you for your time, Matsuda-san," Aki said, as she stood, feeling horrible as she glanced at his shaking hands, seeing the beads of sweat on his temples. Kira had awakened memories for him too. "Please let me know if you find anything."

She bowed, her backpack nestling between her shoulder blades. It was the true weight of the world, her father's world and her own, contained in a sack she was trying to carry, as she turned to leave the police station, preparing for the cold embrace of the rain. It splattered against the windows and the sidewalks and people's umbrellas, kicked up in puddles by skidding wheels.

Matsuda watched as she left, pulling her hood over her head and opening her umbrella. It was decorated with paper cranes like the ones hanging from her hairpiece.

She seemed colorful, whimsical, but gray at the same time, and as he looked at her details again he felt it. It was something bittersweet, ironic, that he couldn't quite articulate.

As Aki stepped into the rain, the cool breeze drawled around her, whispering in a language she couldn't understand. The wind knew what she was hiding and it was whispering amongst its currents about who she was, what she had done, but as long as everyone around her couldn't hear the wind, she was safe.

_ "Hey, be careful -"_

She turned at the hiss of warning, eyes widening as she looked for who had spoken. It sounded like a young woman, but nobody had approached her and she would've noticed anyone near her -

Her foot fell on something softer than concrete. It seemed to compress. 

She looked down at it.

_A notebook..._?

It was a violet journal, decorated with a Magellanic galaxy print. A strange unreadable script flourished on the cover.

She picked it up, feeling the glossy, leathery cover, confused as to why it wasn't ruined by the rain. Did it belong to someone? She tried to dry it, looking for a name, but it was blank on the outside. The pages were soft and thick, a little damp. She decided to open it, to see if someone's name was on the inside.

Blank. Completely blank, save for a brightly orange thread that seemed to be a bookmark through the spine. At least until the front page came unstuck from the back of the cover -

_Oh no._

Her eyes widened, chest tightening, and on reflex she shoved the book into her coat and ran, shaking, as the wind whispered around her.

_Be careful._

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first death note work! please leave a comment :)


End file.
